238 Dr DONALDSON, ON THE STATUE OF SOLON 



was no doubt sufficient for them that he was an eminent Greek sage and poet, and that he was 

 forthcoming in a first-rate statue. The excellence of this figure, as a work of art, is just the 

 reason why copies of it would be multiplied, and there was nothing in the circumstances of 

 Herculaneum to prevent the people of this town from securing, as we see they did secure, 

 Greek sculpture of rare excellence and value. Next to Neapolis and Capua it seems that this 

 old city was the most considerable place in Campania. Its population had at one time been 

 principally Hellenic, and it had afterwards become a Colonia. The dimensions of the amphi- 

 theatre provide for a large population, and the elaborate pictures and statues, to say nothing 

 of the literary remains, indicate an exalted condition of cultivation and refinement. There was 

 nothing then to prevent the inhabitants of Herculaneum from acquiring the best copy that 

 could be procured of the best statue in Greece, and we see in this particular case that they 

 succeeded in obtaining a work of art which, in the absence of the original, must be regarded 

 as one of the finest draped figures that have proceeded from the studio of a Greek sculptor. 



The question has now been considered from all sides. We have seen that the statue 

 before us possesses the characteristics of the age at which the Salaminian effigy was erected, 

 and that the costume represents the mode of wearing the mantle which was the characteristic 

 mark of a well-born and well-bred Athenian at that particular epoch : while the attitude is so 

 distinctive that ..Eschines and Demosthenes made the statue which exhibited it, the suggestive 

 topic of their invectives and arguments. Accordingly, as the style of the statue fixes it to this 

 particular time, the use made of the statue by the two great orators renders it tolerably certain 

 that no other figure in such a posture was then generally known. And if it is said that the 

 same attitude might have been adopted by sculptors for other portrait statues subsequent to 

 the time of .^schines, there is a simple answer to this. The excellence of the work indicates 

 a first-rate artist, and such an artist would not have been beholden to a predecessor for the 

 main features of his design. We know indeed from a speech delivered by Dion Chrysostomus, 

 not very long after the destruction of Herculaneum (Rhodiaca Oratio, xxxi.), that a practice 

 had grown up at Rhodes of altering the inscriptions of public statues, especially bronzes, and 

 making them serve as representations of other personages, whom it had been decreed to honour 

 in this way : 6 yap aTparrj-yo^ ov av avTi^ (pavri twv avaKeitxevwv tovtwv avSpidvTtov ano- 

 ce'iKvvcxiv' etra tJjs fxev irpoTepov ovatjs eTrtypacprj^ avaipeOeicFr]^, eTepov o ovofxaro^ eyyapayOev- 

 Tos, Tre'/oas e;^6i to t^s Tifxiji (p. 569 R, P- 346 Dindorf). But then this practice was probably 

 confined to Rhodes, where there was a superabundance of these honorary statues, and the strong 

 arguments of Dion would probably put a stop to the imposition even in that island. Besides, 

 the orator tells us tliat the Rhodians did not change the inscriptions of well-known and dis- 

 tinguishable statues (p. 607 B, p. 370 Dindorf), of those which were defined not only by the 

 name but by the characteristics {■^upaKTrip) of the person represented (p. 591 e, p. 360 Dindorf), 

 but only made this bad use of the undistinguishable and very old figures (ao->y/xots kuI a(bo^pa 

 iraXaiois KaTayfwvTai, p. 370, 1. 8, Dindorf). Now these particulars would except the statue 

 before us, if it were that of Solon, from any such malversation even at Rhodes, where iEschines 

 would have had a statue, if he obtained such an honour anywhere ; for he was the founder of 

 a school of rhetoric there. And the notoriety of the statue at Salamis, and the circulation 

 which he would give to his own writings, would be its guarantee against any appropriation 



